I haven't talked in front of a microphone like this here in the dining room. I feel a little intimidated. Of course, I was feeling intimidated even before I got here, so the microphone is just an excuse. I feel in some way that I don't really have anything to say to you, but I'll go ahead and give a talk. I mean, of course, I guess it's rather like the Zen master, there was a Zen master named Tenke.

[01:12]

Once he said to his students, see with your eyes, hear with your ears, smell with your nose, feel with your feeler, think with your thinker. He didn't add those things, but I'm adding them. Nothing in the universe is hidden. What else would you have me say? There's not really any secrets, and there's not really anything that any of us don't know or need to know. Whether we know or don't know, life is something about going on anyway, going forward, having some courage, just continuing.

[02:15]

What we think we're missing is the answer. Sometimes we think we're missing the answer. Basically, we think that there must be some way to do it so that we don't hurt as much. I guess this is what I'm going to talk about tonight. Basically, Buddhism teaches that pain is inevitable and suffering is optional. We want to know, isn't there some better way to avoid the pain than the way we've had, because most of us are not pain-free. Pain arises, physical pain, emotional pain, difficulties, problems. I mentioned the other night, some problem is necessary, actually, to go forward in our life and to continue and to grow, to concentrate or to practice meditation.

[03:42]

Some problem is necessary, Suzuki said, and it's pretty clear. We think that if we have no problem, oh, then wouldn't that be great, and wouldn't that indicate how far we've gotten? So, pain in this sense, the inevitability of pain, you know, is basic Buddhist teaching, transiency and pain. I'm actually switching the language here a little bit to say that suffering is optional. And, you know, the difficulty, what makes it, what turns pain into suffering is that we, once pain arises, it becomes something about good and bad, right and wrong. If I have pain, I must be bad. I must be wrong if I have pain. I must have done something wrong, that's why I have pain.

[04:50]

I must be bad, that's why I have pain. So, one of the basic, you know, things we hear over and over again for the practice of meditation is, stop thinking good and bad, stop judging right and wrong. Nothing to it, right? But, first whiff of pain, and I'm bad, I'm wrong, I must not be doing it right, because if I was doing it right, I wouldn't hurt. So, this is a big problem for us, because pain is also then information, and it, you know, some things we see with our eyes will not be pleasant, some things we hear won't be pleasant, some things we feel won't be pleasant. And so, in order not to have unpleasant, in order not to have pain, we stop seeing, stop hearing, stop thinking, stop feeling, we narrow down our senses and our capacity to experience life.

[06:06]

And maybe if we get it down narrow enough, we won't have any pain. And, of course, at some point, of course, we realize that the narrowness of our life is another kind of pain. Uh-oh, darn, that strategy didn't work. Seems so good for so long. So, we're studying, you know, some of us have noticed this, we've, most of us here, you see, this is why, what can I tell you? We're here at Tassajara, you know, because we've had this kind of insight that the way we've narrowed our life down to avoid pain is actually painful, and another kind. And that painful is actually what I'm calling tonight suffering. That's the suffering that's optional. We don't have to actually close ourself down, but we could decide to actually choose pain.

[07:11]

You know, choose to be willing to have some pain and meet it and be with it. Which is to meet and be with ourself and to meet and be with our friends and our loved ones who sometimes, you know, we or, you know, each of us or people we live with or love dearly are in pain of some sort. And we could, you know, be deciding then to be with them at that time, be with ourself at that time, rather than telling them or ourself, you must have done something wrong, you must be bad, you're feeling some pain, there's some way to do it, so you wouldn't have to. So suffering, in this case, you could say is narrowing ourself down or suffering is all the things that we do to, you know, in our effort to avoid pain. And it's not that, you know, we need to go out of our way to find pain.

[08:14]

Years ago, there was a somewhat unbalanced person at Zen Center in San Francisco, I mean, we're all somewhat unbalanced. But she used to want to go from Zen Center over a few blocks away was Hayden Fillmore, and it was at that time a very rough neighborhood. So she used to go over there at midnight or 1 a.m. when all the drug deals were going down, because she figured she, you know, ought to do something that's scary and, you know, difficult and challenging. But anyway, we don't need to, it's not like we need to, we're not, you know, the Zen school is not like anyway, put a crown of thorns on your head or tie, you know, barbed wire around your waist and cinch it in, etc. We don't have the idea that we need to go looking for pain. This is just the pain of being a human being, you know, being alive on this planet.

[09:20]

There's much suffering or pain in the world. You know, specifically, of course, in some sense, you know, the suffering is closing our heart, closing our heart to not feel the pain. And then, you know, we become at some point we notice this is suffering. Do you have my heart closed like this, whether it's to myself or dear friend or to the world. To close our heart or to narrow ourself down to suffering, all the things we can do. And then we start to blame sometimes other people. You caused the pain, you know, or the schedule here causes the pain or the yoga causes the pain or the sitting causes the pain. And it just, you know, there's the pain is going to be inevitable and it's how we, it's our willingness. You know, our choice to be with it and to, you know, become big enough to be with pain.

[10:27]

So yoga, for instance, is immediately stretching, having pain and becoming bigger in the face of it. Not becoming smaller and tightening up away from it, but actually, you know, opening into it. And you try to find a level of working yoga where you don't work so hard that you cause yourself to, to clinch up. But you get to a stretch and a place where you have some difficulty or pain. And then where it's not so intense that you automatically react by closing and see if you can breathe and be with it and open and release. And you begin to become larger. And the same, you know, zazen, of course, is sitting. The way we do is also a form of, you know, a kind of yoga posture. And in sitting we do the same kind of practice, of course. To see if we can be with pain without turning it into suffering.

[11:34]

I'm bad. I must be doing something wrong. How do I get away from this? And consequently tightening and so forth. So in either case, of course, we encourage ourselves not to try to do yoga or sitting with our jaw, our eyes. Usually it doesn't help to do either of these things with your jaw tight, which is actually where a lot of the right and wrong, good and bad is. I must be bad. This is painful, so I should endure it. So I usually advise people when people ask me, you know, why don't you move if you're starting to clench your jaw and tense your eyes? Why don't you move? You know, if you can't just relax them.

[12:34]

And, you know, take a more relaxed posture for a while and then sit again. The other night I mentioned, you know, sitting up straight in meditation, being in the center of your life and how powerful that is. And it's interesting how much, you know, other postures are some way to kind of like duck or get out of the way of the pain that would be there when you're there. You know, if you appear in the world, there will be pain there. Uh-oh. You know, maybe I can, you know, dodge it. So this is very interesting, you know, the various postures we have in our attempts to avoid pain. And usually the postures, you know, for the most part, in order to resist pain, we have to tighten something and shift something and make ourselves smaller or, you know, go into hiding. We try to disappear in order to not have pain.

[13:40]

So in a way, you know, the price of appearing or being here is pain. Some kind of unpleasant, you know, something that's a challenge. Otherwise, we'd all just show up and we'd be here, right? What stops us, you see? And sometimes this literally, you know, the difference between pain and suffering is, you know, physically. If there's a physical pain, the most common thing we do is try to move our body away from it. How do you do that? Because the pain will come along with you when you move. But we try to either, you know, move away from the pain or isolate the pain at some distance from us.

[14:47]

And either of those reactions within our body, we ask our body, you know, to do that, to move away from the pain or to wall off the pain. And either of those then produce suffering. The pain gets worse. Now it's suffering. So actually choosing, you know, to be with, you know, if you're going to be, when we're going to be present and we choose to be with our experience, you know, the moment, in the present moment, there will be some challenge to it, some difficulty. So we all the time, you know, are deciding to show up or not. I include myself in this, you know, obviously. I think, you know, over the years I'm surprised, but the other day I was reading Tussard Cooking, which I wrote in 1973, and I was surprised how good it was. You know, this is how well we understand things, how well you understand things, how well we all understand things.

[15:57]

And then it's just a matter of practicing it, you know. And that book said the same kind of thing. Don't stick to anything, you know, find your way, show up, taste, smell, you know, dream. It wasn't, it's amazing, you know. So my practice in many ways hasn't changed all these years. You know, the material or what one is practicing with changes. Suzuki Roshi mentioned, you know, practices like range after range of mountains. You're always climbing up, it's steep, you get to the top, terrific view, down the other side. And there's a new, you know, challenge. You know, there's a new difficulty or pain or something to be with. It's not, you know, and I think especially, certainly when I started practicing,

[17:01]

I thought there must be some way to do it. So you did it once and for all. There's no more pain. And then that would be enlightenment. So as soon as you have, you know, some pain or challenge to your life, then, oh gosh, I must not be enlightened after all. Or, you know, I guess I'm not such a good student. You know, right away, it's about good and bad, right and wrong. So we're trying just to be in the middle of our life. And if there's pain, to be with it. And not to be, you know, doing the optional suffering of shrinking away from pain or difficulty or, you know, attacking. Someone else. I appreciate Dogen's remark.

[18:02]

It's mentioned in Kaz's new book, Enlightenment Unfolds. It's an aside or something from a talk he gave. And he said, sometimes you will believe that you are right and others are clearly mistaken. But he says it's better, you know, not to get into a fight about it. Trying to convince them and defeat the other person. At the same time, if you're right and you abandon your position, he says, you're a coward. You know. So he says, without, you know, trying to convince the other person, why don't you just step back? Step back and without trying to convince the other person or without abandoning your point of view, just step back and don't be so competitive about it.

[19:04]

And probably the other person will step back too. And there you are. You know, there's pain, but you don't make it into suffering by trying to defeat the other person or by abandoning your position, you know, by making yourself wrong, by making yourself smaller. You just don't, you know, turn it into suffering. There was that wonderful story. I forget the name of the teacher and the monk asked him, what about the people who leave the monastery and never come back? And the teacher said, they're horse's asses or donkey's asses or something.

[20:05]

And the monk said, what about the monks who leave the monastery and then return? And the teacher said, they remember the benefits. And so the monk asked, well, what are the benefits? And the teacher said, heat in the summer and cold in the winter. Now that's, you know, if you're here at Tassajara, that's what, you know, we would call pain. You know, along with those little brown flies, when it's, when you, the, you know, what a, what a place. And when it's these few days where it's not too hot and not too cold, there's these brown flies. How did that get worked out? So at some point, you know, if we completely shrink away from these, you know, what benefits are left? You know, if we shrink away from, when we're shrinking away from the heat and the cold and not, you know, when we show up, there will be heat and cold.

[21:15]

There will be brown flies. There'll be, you know, stomach aches and, you know, all kinds of things. And there's, there's usually some information there. This is also information for us that we haven't wanted to look at. So I want to, I guess, shift a bit at this point. I want to mention Suzuki Roshi's teaching about Shikantaza, or just sitting, thusness, or, you know, being present here today, you know, with pain, not suffering.

[22:25]

Shikantaza, he said, is for, simply speaking, for you to be yourself. Not so different than see with your eyes, hear with your ears. To live in each moment. And he said, you know, why it's difficult for us is because we, he put it in terms of the breath, inhaling and exhaling. And why it's difficult for us is because we always want to inhale. So he mentions, if you exhale smoothly and completely, complete calmness of mind is just beyond the end of your exhalation. And as you exhale completely, it will disappear. It will disappear into emptiness.

[23:33]

And then, if you're still alive, you will inhale. The inhalation will come. And he said, then you will say, oh, I'm still alive. Fortunately or unfortunately. He made a little joke out of it. I mentioned this at my Thursday night sitting group in San Rafael and the next week my mom told me. I didn't realize, she said, that I wasn't exhaling completely. And I tried that and it really worked. She was surprised. I was very pleased because I feel like she tries very few of the things that I suggest. And she said, when I didn't exhale completely, I noticed I was a little scattered, a little distracted.

[24:48]

So this is one possible way to practice. Actually, interestingly enough, to be present, to show up, is to disappear. To disappear on the exhalation. And we kind of have to remind ourselves mostly because we get very involved. The inhalation is associated with doing and accomplishing and what we think of as living and performing and being alive. So it's easy to get so busy. Even here at Tassajara, obviously, with the work we do, and even in meditation, it's easy to be busy. And certainly we have, many of us, busy lives. So regardless of the circumstances, and it doesn't have to be in meditation,

[25:54]

if you notice you're breathing and you make a point of finishing your exhalation, you right away slow down and calm down and you disappear and your calmness of mind will deepen. And your capacity to be with what is painful or difficult will increase. The story Suzuki Roshi told about it was about a friend of his who, at the time, was in the hospital and had a heart attack. And he said his friend was having trouble breathing. And he was trying so hard just to inhale. Because he wanted to be sure. And to exhale completely, you let the inhale take care of itself and will just arise. And you don't have to make an effort to inhale, actually. So this is shifting one's effort or focus from inhaling to allowing a complete exhale.

[27:03]

And then, of course, generally, we're not, Buddhism generally, we're not, like many yoga practices, we're not trying to control the breath or do pranayama breathing, which is useful for developing the capacity of your lungs and shifting the way your body, you organize yourself to breathe and various things. But in zazen practice, you know, we're not trying to regulate the breath. But still, if you focus on the exhalation, you can notice and just smoothly. There's a place where your exhale tends to stop normally and you're ready to inhale. And if you just let it finish, you know, there will be some calmness. And then there's some quiet and the inhalation comes. So we disappear.

[28:07]

And then this willingness to disappear is, Suzuki Roshi said, you know, our experience of mortality. And being willing to die is actually what helps us appear each moment. And in our life. This is similar to being willing to have the pain or difficulty that we have. And just be with it. And rather than pushing it away, trying to fix it, thinking we're wrong because we have it, thinking we must have done something bad. I must be bad. I did something wrong. That's why I have pain. So all of that is turning pain into suffering. Rather than just breathing and exhaling completely, inhaling. And we're completely with, we have this capacity to be completely with ourself and with others. Hmm.

[29:17]

I'm trying to think if there's anything else I wanted to say tonight. I can't think of anything. Especially. I do want to point out, I guess, though, that, you know, perhaps I've been, you know, a little negative sounding to say that to show up, you know, to be present in your life is to encounter some pain or difficulty or, you know, something that's challenging. But this is also, of course, the great joy of our life is to be alive. So it's like an adventure or, you know, some discovery. To not put pain in the category of right and wrong and good and bad, you know, is to be ready, you know, and open to discovery.

[31:14]

To inspiration. We have some real vitality there. Another way of thinking about this is, you know, that what is a challenge in our life is to meet something we've never met before. To meet the other. So a good deal of the time, you know, we feel much more comfortable meeting someone we think we've met before. Meeting, you know, only noticing things about ourself that we've noticed before. And it's so discouraging, isn't it, to just notice things about yourself you've noticed before. But if you noticed anything else, you know, this would be meeting other. Something you've never met before. Now what? What will you do when you meet something you've never met before? So this is interesting, you know, this is a big challenge.

[32:22]

And it's also like where, you know, there's discovery and possibility of inspiration and imagination and vitality. And it's in meeting other. Whether you call otherwise other as you, yourself, something about you, or something about somebody else. We actually can discover things. And we actually can grow. So, you know, in this other sense, you know, what is painful is just something other. And then actually meeting it. And, you know, seeing with your eyes, smelling with your nose, touching with your hands. You know, to actually meet it is really so wonderful. Such a joy. Such a pleasure. My next door neighbor in Inverness, where I rented, I have a little cottage I rent,

[33:24]

has been married, only they're not actually married, I don't think. They've been living together for 20 years. And he says, you know, for a while it was very disturbing to him when it turned out she wasn't who he thought she was. And, of course, the longer you live with somebody, and you don't have to live with them very long, you know, classically the honeymoon is 90 days. And it starts turning out more and more they're not the person you thought they were. So this was very upsetting to him for some time. And then, of course, he wanted, you know, can't you be the person that you were? And she didn't want to do that. So he said, it's actually much more wonderful now, you know, that she's someone else.

[34:32]

And she's not my idea of who I was living with. It's much more interesting, you know, that there's someone else there than who I wanted her to be. So this much more interesting, much more engaging, much more vitality is also, you know, something kind of challenging. Maybe challenging is more, you know, pain, I just, you know, any of these words are just words, right? But this is something challenging. And we have this great capacity, and it's the great joy of our life to actually meet something other, something that's challenging, something that we haven't met before, to discover.

[35:34]

So we, of course, you know, we do well then to let go of how things could be or should be and find out how they are. You know, who we are, actually, and who the people we're with are. So this is my wish in my life. Sometimes I'm up to it and sometimes I'm not. Anyway, so I come back to it, you know. Again and again, remind myself and I remember this is my wish. I think I want to, I guess I'd like to tell you a poem of the Dogen quotes in the Instructions to the Cook. It's something like, with one word, three words, five or seven, nothing in the universe can be grasped.

[37:15]

This is, you know, not so different than nothing in the universe is hidden. You could also say, no matter how many words you use, don't try to grasp anything. Anyway, then the poem says, the full moon falls and sinks into the ocean. The black dragon jewel you've been searching for is everywhere. So, you know, for tonight, I think about this black dragon jewel you've been searching for is everywhere. Of course, it's, you know, your own presence. Your own capacity to show up, to be alive in the moment. It's everywhere, not dependent on where you are.

[38:29]

Maybe the full moon falling and sinking into the ocean is like exhaling completely. Thank you very much for being here tonight.

[38:53]

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